Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie

There’s a whole literature of studies by scientific spin-watchers, each of them highlighting spin in their own fields. 15 per cent of trials in obstetrics and gynaecology spun their non-significant results as if they showed benefits of the treatment.63 35 per cent of studies of prognostic tests for cancer used spin to obfuscate the non-significant nature of their findings.64 47 per cent of trials of obesity treatments published in top journals were spun in some way.65 83 per cent of papers reporting trials of antidepressant and anxiety medication failed to discuss important limitations of their study design.66 A review of brain-imaging studies concluded that hyping up correlation into causation was ‘rampant’.67 Some forms of spin shade into fraud, or at least gross incompetence: a 2009 review showed that, of a sample of studies published in Chinese medical journals that claimed to be randomised controlled trials, only 7 per cent actually used randomisation.68